INSIGHTS
In Brief:
- Indonesians now spend 55% of their time online on the open internet, making it essential for brands to invest their advertising dollars where it truly matters.
- Omnichannel marketing involves spreading your brand’s message across various channels, both online and offline, ensuring that it reaches customers accurately and consistently.
- The four key pillars of a successful omnichannel approach are sales, marketing, fulfillment and logistics, and operations. Each pillar plays a crucial role in meeting customer expectations and delivering a seamless brand experience.
- To begin implementing an effective omnichannel strategy, businesses should focus on understanding their customers, diversifying their sales channels, creating educational content, integrating social media, and providing convenient options like in-store pickup.
- Brands like Amazon, Bank of America, Starbucks, Nike, and Sephora have successfully integrated their channels to provide customers with seamless and personalized experiences across touchpoints.
The way people consume media has changed, and it’s time for your advertising strategy to adapt as well. Indonesians now spend 55% of their time online on the open internet. Surprisingly, many brands still put a lot more money into walled gardens across APAC, up to 3.8 times more. It’s about time to invest your dollars where it really counts.
When Indonesians are online, they love listening to music and podcasts, browsing websites, and streaming TV shows, movies, and live sports. If your brand isn’t present in those spaces, you’re missing out on numerous opportunities to make a bigger impact.
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is like spreading the word about your business on all kinds of channels, both online and offline. It’s about making sure your message reaches people accurately, no matter where they are.
So, let’s say you’re launching a new product, running promotions, or advertising other stuff your business sells. You can share all that information on social media, websites, physical stores, and mobile devices, all managed by your company. It’s about getting the message out there in as many ways as possible.
It’s super important for a company to handle all its marketing stuff as a whole. Omnichannel means that the brand interacts with potential customers on different platforms, both online and offline (like social media, mobile, stores, etc.), so that customers have a smooth and consistent shopping experience no matter where they are.
When you think about the benefits of using omnichannel in your business, it means you can give customers lots of options for shopping conveniently. They can reach out or shop on any channel they want, and they’ll get personalized service and special deals.
This will make your brand more recognizable, keep customers coming back, and boost sales and revenue while reducing the number of customers who leave.
4 Pillars of Successful Omnichannel Strategy
Before diving into ways to create your omnichannel strategy, it’s crucial to grasp the key elements that can meet customer expectations while also providing delightful surprises.
Here are four key pillars for a successful omnichannel approach:
Sales
Your sales strategy plays a crucial role in shaping your omnichannel strategy. It involves identifying the channels that align with your target audience’s preferences and behaviors. By understanding where your customers are most likely to engage and make purchases, you can prioritize those channels and allocate resources accordingly. This ensures that you are meeting customers where they are and optimizing your sales opportunities across various touchpoints.
Marketing
Consistency in your marketing messages is essential across all your channels. A unified omnichannel marketing strategy means that your brand’s look, feel, and messaging remain consistent across different platforms. This creates a cohesive brand experience for customers, regardless of the channel they interact with.
By maintaining a consistent brand image, you can foster a sense of connection and familiarity, strengthening your customers’ relationship with your brand.
Fulfillment and Logistics
Fulfillment and logistics are critical components of the omnichannel experience. Whether you’re delivering a meal or shipping a product, ensuring smooth and efficient order fulfillment is vital to meet customer expectations. This includes factors such as timely delivery, accurate tracking, and seamless returns or exchanges.
By prioritizing a seamless fulfillment process, you not only meet customers’ needs but also reinforce your brand promise. When customers receive their orders quickly and hassle-free, it enhances their overall brand experience and fosters trust and loyalty.
Operations
To execute an effective omnichannel strategy, you need a robust operational system that ties all your channels together. This involves integrating your various sales channels, marketing platforms, and backend operations.
By leveraging integrated tools and technologies, such as those offered by Square, you can streamline processes, manage inventory, track sales data, and provide a unified customer experience.
A well-coordinated operational setup ensures that your customers enjoy a seamless journey across channels, from browsing to purchasing, creating a positive and consistent brand perception.
By considering these four pillars – sales, marketing, fulfillment and logistics, and operations – you can develop and implement a comprehensive omnichannel strategy.
This strategy aligns your customer touchpoints, ensures consistency in brand messaging, delivers efficient order fulfillment, and integrates your operational processes, ultimately enhancing the overall customer experience and driving business success.
Getting Started with Omnichannel Marketing
Getting started with omnichannel marketing involves a strategic approach to seamlessly integrate and align your marketing efforts across multiple channels. Here are some steps to help you begin your journey:
Get to know your customers.
To create a successful omnichannel retail strategy or restaurant strategy, it’s important to have a good understanding of your customers and how they make their purchases. One way to do this is by conducting a simple survey where you ask people about their shopping and dining preferences. You can even offer a discount as an incentive for customers to complete the survey.
You can ask customers how they find out about new products or menu items (such as through social media, in-store browsing, or word of mouth), and what kinds of items they prefer to buy in-person rather than online.
This information will help you focus your efforts and determine how different channels can complement each other. For example, if many customers mention that they discover new items through Instagram, then you know that investing your energy in that channel would be worthwhile.
Data is crucial in this process. There are various business metrics you can track to understand how customers interact with your business. This includes things like:
- The most visited pages on your website
- How customers react to changes in your product offerings
- Engagement levels from marketing emails
- Sales breakdown between mobile and desktop devices
- Conversion metrics from social media
When it comes to your physical store or restaurant, keep track of new versus returning customers and their buying patterns. Look for patterns in the time of day when most purchases are made and the frequency of purchases. All of this data provides a comprehensive view of the factors that influence your customers’ buying behaviors.
Offer in-store Wi-Fi in your physical location.
Increasingly consumers do their own product research while they’re in brick-and-mortar stores and restaurants. Research from Google found that 61% of people use their phones when in a restaurant or a bar. Additionally, 84% of consumers access the internet from their phones while in a store, and 65% use their phones to find coupons online, according to Forrester Research and RetailMeNot.
Offer in-store Wi-Fi to help usher these customers along their buying journeys. To make in-store and in-restaurant research even easier, integrate QR codes that link to product and nutritional information online.
Diversify where you sell.
Sell and market your products wherever your customers shop, browse, or simply look for more information. Most customers navigate between many touch points to purchase an item — brick-and-mortar locations; social media; online marketplaces such as Amazon and Etsy; your own website; review sites; and larger retailers that sell different brands, to name a few.
While you diversify, remember to keep your customer experience consistent. As consumers jump across multiple channels, they should encounter similar branding and pricing. Ninety percent of shoppers expect their experience to be consistent across all channels and devices.
Sell in different places to reach more customers.
Put your products out there wherever your customers hang out, shop, or go for information. People hop between so many places to buy something these days: actual stores, social media, online marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy, your own website, review sites, and big retailers that carry various brands, you name it.
But remember, while you’re spreading out, try to keep a consistent customer experience. When shoppers jump around different channels, they expect to see the same branding and pricing. In fact, 90% of customers want their experience to be consistent no matter where they’re shopping, whether it’s on their phone or some other device.
Create educational content.
Create educational content that is of high quality and engaging. It is crucial to educate your customers, answer their questions, and build trust. The more compelling content you create to explain why buying from you is a great choice, the more sales you’ll make.
When it comes to content marketing campaigns, there are various options such as blog posts, social media, guides, customer reviews, and livestream videos. Videos are particularly engaging, boost SEO, and perform well on social media. Consider making explainer videos for your core products or services, or create a series of tutorials to showcase your expertise.
Integrate social media into your storefront.
Integrate social media into your physical store experience. For example, you can have displays in dressing rooms that show product reviews for the items customers are trying on, offering additional insights before making a purchase.
Encourage customers to take photos of their purchases or meals and share them on Instagram for a chance to win a prize. You can also have screens displaying live social media feeds related to your products or industry.
QR codes are another technology that can enhance your omnichannel approach. Get creative with QR codes by using them to provide information about the makers or chefs behind your products and recreate the in-store ambiance in a digital setting.
Provide free in-store pickup.
People, especially millennials, love saving on shipping costs. Consider transforming your physical store into a pickup location for online orders, allowing customers to collect their purchases without paying for shipping.
Our Future of Retail report revealed that nearly three out of ten shoppers prefer picking up items curbside or in-store for faster access. Moreover, more than a quarter of customers who choose in-store pickup also end up shopping inside the store, creating a seamless omnichannel sales cycle.
Utilize your expertise.
As a small business, you have the advantage of possessing extensive knowledge about your products and industry. Capitalize on this by offering tutorials, workshops, or online resources that showcase your expertise. Incorporate live chat or video chat options on your website, allowing customers to connect with experts for personalized assistance.
You can also empower your staff to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience by providing them with social media training. This enables them to share their expertise with customers through social channels, enhancing the sales process.
By implementing an omnichannel selling strategy, you can expand your customer reach and foster loyalty by ensuring a consistent and accessible brand experience. Small businesses have a natural advantage in adopting this approach, as the tools and resources needed to integrate different channels are already within your grasp.
Some of the Top Omnichannel Marketing Examples From Across Industries
Here are some of the top examples of brands that have nailed their omnichannel marketing strategies and are delivering exceptional experiences across touchpoints:
Amazon
When it comes to e-commerce, Amazon is the master of providing seamless omnichannel experiences. They effortlessly connect all their channels and interactions, including their website, mobile app, Alexa devices, and smartwatches. With features like the Amazon card that can be used anywhere, customers can easily place orders and track them from any device or location.
Bank of America
While banking firms may not always be associated with strong omnichannel strategies, Bank of America stands out. They have successfully fused offline and online experiences by offering major everyday tasks through their mobile and desktop apps. This means that customers can now interact with the bank through multiple channels, enhancing their overall banking experience.
Starbucks:
Getting a coffee has never been as enriching as the Starbucks experience. With their awesome reward app, they offer a seamless omnichannel experience. You can use their card, top it up through the app or website, and use it to buy a delicious cup of coffee. Your card details are synced across all channels, providing an incredible mobile experience with the brand.
Nike
Nike has embraced omnichannel marketing to deliver a seamless brand experience. They have integrated their online store, physical stores, and mobile app to provide customers with a consistent and personalized journey.
Nike’s customers can browse and purchase products online, have them delivered to their doorstep, or conveniently pick them up in-store. The integration of their loyalty program, NikePlus, across channels has resulted in increased customer engagement and loyalty.
Sephora:
When it comes to nailing omnichannel marketing, Sephora is the boss. They know how to blend the online and in-store experience to spoil their customers. In their physical stores, you’ll find everything you need, from free makeovers to beauty tips. And online, they make sure you can track your purchases, scan items, and enjoy helpful tutorials too. Sephora has it all covered!
Final Thoughts: Is Omnichannel Marketing Worth the Hassle?
These days, customers have high expectations, and it’s important to ensure that they leave satisfied and eager to return. By implementing omnichannel marketing, you can effectively manage all customer interactions across your website, social media, and physical store, avoiding any disconnect.
In the past, marketing followed a single-channel approach, which we now refer to as “multi-channel marketing.” Nowadays, we have numerous ways to reach our customers. In-store, we can offer deals and promotions, while social media and traditional advertising are also effective methods.
However, with multi-channel marketing, the problem arises that these different channels are not connected. For instance, a customer might communicate with a customer service representative on Facebook, but when they visit the store, the staff may have no knowledge of their needs.
The issue with this system is that it inconveniences customers, who have to explain the same question or problem to multiple people. Given the higher customer expectations today, it is crucial to provide a seamless customer experience where they don’t have to repeat themselves.
